Chung's Blog: Chicago

After the weekend with Krist and Jay in New York, flew down to Chicago for a work trip. At the end of trip I managed to take a day for some sights.

Not having any real pre-conceptions about Chicago, except gangster films, I found Chicago to have a lot more character and appeal than I expected. It felt large and cosmopolitan, like NY, but much cleaner. The architecture has a great early 20th century design due to the city burning down at the end of the 19th century, an all too often story.

Chicago River

Like many other cities Chicago invested heavily at the turn of the millennium, in this case they built a Millennium Park, of course overran and over budget.

This has some pretty attractions for tourists including the Crown Fountain, two monoliths that face each other and project animated faces that smile, frown, blink etc.. They even had water features.

Crown Fountain

This would be pretty cool to see at night. Another interesting feature was Cloud Gate, aka The Bean. This is a polished steel sculpture that almost looks like an alien spaceship.

Cloud Gate

Cloud Gate (The Bean)

I thought I'd try out the metro system and head North up to Wilmette. The idea was to get a good view of the city before heading to the John Hancock Center once the sun was starting to set.

Instead I found the Bahá'í House of Worship which is an intricately designed building. The Bahá'í Faith is interesting in that it teaches unification and acceptance and has followers from many different religions.

Bahá'í House of Worship in Wilmette, Illinois

Back downtown at the Magnificent Mile, we have the John Hancock Center, which is high with an observatory on the top. Right in front of me were about 20+ tourists from Central America who were organizing purchasing tickets. This of course is never straightforward in a large group, when they finally completed their transaction they were strongly informed to only have 12 people in the elevator at once. After purchasing my ticket I ran into them again, this time having their photo taken against a fake backdrop, so I took the opportunity to turn down the photo and head for the elevator.

Naturally it wasn't there and was taking it's time down. By the time I got into the lift they all turned up and piled in. Sod 12 people, the maximum stated in the elevator, let's see if this thing can carry 25 people. Well I've never been in a lift that struggled staying level as everyone got in. Forget the 100th floor, I thought we were going to end up in the basement.

John Hancock Center

Well we made it up amid much excitement from the group (and some fear from me), to some stunning 360° views of greater Chicago.

View from the top

Well after all that what better way to finish off with dinner at Quartino's, a fantastic quant Italian restaurant that cures their own meats. Fantastic salumi and ravioli washed down with some red.

Quartino's